usque ad finem
by cast-a-vision
Summary: He smiles like steel, or a hot summer's day. Oh, Rose Tyler, can't you see me now?, he thinks, and almost laughs. Warning: creepy story/plotless exploration of the Doctor being morally grey and perhaps a bit twisted. The year is probably around 2030 for Rose and TenToo, and Ten is probably post-Waters of Mars if he'd cracked just a tad more.


The doctor in blue reels back, as he realizes that he _doesn't _know himself — not this him, not anymore, or he wouldn't possibly have let it happen. Whirlpools quake in his uncertain eyes and reflect back the molten fury of the other. This is him without Rose, he thinks to himself. This is him without Martha, without Donna, without humanity. He's a monster. He'd always known, really.

The Doctor steps forward, languidly, hands thrust in his pockets. His smile is sharp, and he runs his tongue over his teeth like a bladesmith feeling the edge of a knife.  
"But really, how could you not have seen this coming? It's that head of yours — it looks the same, but it's too small, you know it is. It's just too small. Can't you feel it? All those wonderful little thoughts, all that endless memory, just slipping away from you? The senility of being human. I pity you."

The Doctor relaxes into this pose — at his full height, towering over himself, two hearts pounding their authoritative death sentence _onetwothreefour_, and milks it for all it's worth, preening a little, as he tends to. He hopes that Rose is still watching. His eyes lock with his other — frailer, younger, yet older, _weaker_ — self, and with a swift movement he raises the sonic in his right hand and reaches for the vortex manipulator with his left, pressing the button. There's a flash of light, then nothing but an empty room, and Rose Tyler screaming at the space where his lesser self had been cowering.

"Doctor! What did you do?" She cries out, running to the space where her husband had been standing, before whipping to face him. Her own vortex manipulator is in her hand, defensively, but she hasn't pressed it. She can't leave him.

He grins manically. She doesn't smile back, and something uncomfortable shifts in his stomach, makes him wonder if maybe he'll have to —  
"Isn't it obvious? I fixed the problem. Metacrisis, into the Void. Only one of me now. As it should be, eh?"

She pales.

"Y-you killed him?"

He shrugs. She stares at him, eyes wide, and goodness, he thinks, she looks older now than she used to.

"Killed, not exactly. Eliminated, yes. Two copies of the same data. I just chucked the backup. It was missing some of the more recent details, and" — he grimaces, thinking of the careworn lines on his ancient young face, and shrugs his shoulders sympathetically — "frankly, it was a bit worn around the edges. Never fancied being mortal, me."

Rose is still staring at him, as if he's gone completely bonkers or (now there's a laugh, he supposes, since she's probably half forgotten after all this time with the Metacrisis) as if he's an alien.

"That-that thing you did. You did it to both of them, yeah?" She waves her vortex manipulator, a bit wildly. How irritating, he thinks, as if he's not standing right in front of her. Anyway, she watched him do it — watched him turn both of the vortex manipulators into one-way void manipulators. She'd stood there while he worked on them, confused but not fighting him, because she'd trusted him. Because she trusts him.

There are fine lines around her eyes and deeper ones on her forehead. Are they laugh lines or frown lines, he wonders, and decides that there's quite a bit of both.

"Yeah, I did. You were standing right there, Rose."

Her eyes flash. He sees the tiniest glimmer of gold, and he aches for it.

"Why? Are you going to kill me next?"

Shock. That's what he's feeling, hearing those words. Leave it to her to still be able to do that, to alter his expectations.

"Kill you? Rose! That was never- I would never, you know I- " he stammers, draws a breath, and tries again.

"I'm _fixing _things. Don't you see? With that version of me gone, it's just us again. The Doctor and Rose, in the TARDIS, as it should be."

He tries for a soft smile, but feels that it sits wrong around the mouth corners. He tries again, this time with gleaming white teeth.  
Rose's reply is sharp, but her voice is thick and wet with rage.

"_As it should be_? That was my husband, you bloody monster! Bring him back! Bring him back right now!" She's running now, into his arms, and suddenly she's pounding on his chest and sobbing into his arms and yes, he thinks, this is the beginning. Now they've begun this tedious process but soon she'll forget it all. One way or another.

He puts his arms around her, gentle but firm, like a boy who has captured a bird by the wingtips but wants only to befriend the fluttering creature. Her arms slide down towards his waist and she hugs him briefly — she can't help but forgive me already, he thinks happily — and then steps away, tossing her hair back from her face as she does so. He takes a moment to look her up and down — his Rose Tyler, ever the adventurer, ever the warrior, no longer confined to domesticity by the pet he'd saddled her with all those years ago — too many, by the streaks of grey he's just now noticing in her hair, but still, that's easy, just a few pit stops and she'll be good as new or at least nineteen. Her shoulders are slumped with grief, but her chin is high and her back is straight. She opens her mouth briefly and seems mildly surprised when no sound comes out.

"I'm sorry," he says perfunctorily, to break the silence, "but he can't come back. I sent him into the Void with no vessel — there's nothing left. You know how it is. Nothing to be done."

She closes her mouth, takes a shallow breath, then a deeper one, and nods, reaching into her pocket.

"I'm sorry too," she says. "I don't want to do this. But I'm the only one who can."

She takes her hand out of her pocket, and she's holding his sonic screwdriver, evidently liberated from his own coat pocket when she'd hugged him. Magnificently clever for an ape, he thinks, and gives her a grin, a real one this time, canines glinting, utterly electric. But when he meets her eyes they're brimming with tears, and he can't see the gold flecks, just the sadness. His smile slips into confusion.

"Goodbye," she chokes out, and holds the sonic in her right hand, the manipulator in her left, and then she raises the screwdriver and presses the button.

A million million neurons fire at once in his too-clever mind — _no why what did I miss you clever girl you killer just like me you why why_ — w_hy can't I see the Gold_, he thinks desperately, and the room writhes into lack of being before his emptying gaze.


End file.
